Cult of Mac

This past week finally saw the unveiling of Google’s long-awaited Chrome OS. Surprising few to none, the big revelation is that Chrome the browser is actually the entire operating system. Using cloud web applications, it will be possible to run a bunch of desktop-ish apps on a Chrome-based netbook at home, then go to work, fire up Chrome on Mac or Windows on your work laptop, and have the same experience there. Pretty snazzy stuff.

It’s yet another take on what cloud-based consumer computing could be (insert “network computing” if you’d like to relive 1996), an heir to the promise of Java and so many others. And it looks to have some legs, even if we’re still quite some ways from seeing commercially available hardware ready to run on it. Many developers will create apps for the platform, and its write-once, read-anywhere (WOMA!) promise is mighty seductive. It would be very easy to imagine a world in which no one develops for traditional desktop operating systems anymore, except for professional applications like video editing and design work. Sounds like bad news for Apple, right?

Having sold millions of copies of their fowls vs. sows catapult game, Angry Birds, developer Rovio is experiencing such success that they’re even starting to begrudge Apple their thirty percent cut off the top of in-app purchases.

Rovio has just announced that they intend on launching Bad Piggy Bank, a new in-game payment system which will allow Angry Birds customers to make in-app purchases without going through Apple.

Ping just got a micron less useless on Friday with the addition of new functionality: the ability to make social playlists and share them with friends.

Boy, Delta’s getting everything right with Apple owners this year. Hot on the heels of their announcement that they would be installing 135 free-to-use iPads at their gates at JFK comes word that they’re now in the process of installing gadget charging stations in their gate areas at 19 United States airports.

Just as Cydia is the dark mirror to the iOS App Store, Cydia will also be available on the Mac, according to Cydia developer Jay “Saurik” Freeman.

The new MacBook Air is a remarkably solid wafer of hardware, especially after the recent EFI Firmware Update that solved the occasional issue of graphics corruption when the Air wakes up from sleep.

It looks, though, like there may be a new crisis brewing and a new glitch to address, this time with the Air’s ability to play nice with he official USB Ethernet Adapter.

Steve Jobs’ disdain for the 7-inch tablet form factor embraced by the likes of would-be iPad killers like the Samsung Galaxy Tab couldn’t be any more dripping even if it poured in bilious rivulets out of his open mouth. At the last earnings call, he flat out dismissed them as “DOA – Dead On Arrival.” He even fantasized about customers sanding the meat off of their fingers until only the skeletal bone was left, since “sand[ing] down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size” is the only way to type comfortably on one.

This contempt seems pretty unequivocal to me, but someone apparently wasn’t paying attention: according to Reuters, Asian manufacturing sources are telling them that Apple is putting together a 7-inch “iPad Mini” for shipment in early 2011.

When a company with as fabled a name as Bowers & Wilkins proffers up an iPod dock, one expects nothing less than enough oomph to satisfy even the most discerning audiophile, and enough svelteness to elicit a smile from even the most ardent aesthete. B&W’s first shot at a dock, the Zeppelin, certainly turned heads when it debuted in 2007 (at least, once word got out about it). But its sprawling, bulbous shape — and sprawling, bulbous, $600 pricetag — limited its appeal. Two years later the company followed with the Zeppelin Mini, a much smaller, less expensive dock that nevertheless tried to maintain the aesthetic and sonic reputation the company was known for.

But at $400, the Mini was still significantly pricier than almost any other dock sitting on, say, an Apple Store’s dock table. Then earlier this year B&W brought the price down to $300, placing it on a level field with other upper-mid-end docks — a league that seems to be gaining players at an almost alarming rate — and allowing it to stand out among its peers as the compact, high-performance star it is.

One of our must-have iOS apps this week is the free OnLive Viewer that gives you a window in to on-demand, instant-play video games through the OnLive game service. Become a spectator and watch hundreds on games being played live throughout the world.

Facebook Browser for iPhone also makes our must-have list this week and provides a refreshing new way to experience Facebook on your iPhone, with a simplistic, elegant user interface.

Also among our favorites this week is Blueprint – a powerful application for iOS developers that enables you to easily plan and create stunning user interfaces for your applications.

Check out the rest of this week’s must-have iOS apps after the break!

A controversial art show featuring photographs of destroyed Apple products is coming to Steve Jobs’ home town this weekend.

Featuring 12 ultra high-resolution digital prints of bullet-riddled MacBooks and blowtorched iPads, the 12LVE exhibit opens Sunday in Palo Alto.

No word on whether Jobs plans to attend the three-month show. “I am not sure whether he’s even aware of the show opening in Palo Alto,” said Tompert. “But who knows.”

Check out all 12 photos here: What Happens When You Shoot A MacBook, And Other Pictures

The opening reception is Sunday, December 12, from 3 to 9 pm at “WhiteSpace” gallery in Town & Country Village in Palo Alto (855 El Camino Real).

Here’s a preview of what what the gallery will look like:

We close out another week with a variety of deals, starting with hardware. There are a number of more than two dozen unibody Mac Book Pros from the Apple Store, starting with a 2.26GHz MacBook Pro for just $929. We also have a new crop of price cuts from the iPad App Store, including “HTML Editor” for just $0.99. Finally, to get you in the holiday spirit is “Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift” from the App Store. This free iPhone or iPad app offers the popular game with holiday-inspired levels.

Along the way, we’ll also check out deals on iMacs, freebie iPhone Apps, an iPhone headset and a winter bundle of applications from MacUpdate. As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Angry Birds Lite is the top downloaded free game on iTunes in 2010.

The pigs-vs-infuriated-fowls diversion beat out Tap Tap Revenge 3, PacMan Lite and Rockband in iTunes Rewind, which highlights the most popular games, music, apps and TV programs in the iTunes Store for 2010.

Angry Birds was also the second most popular free iPhone download overall, trailing Facebook but coming in ahead of Skype and The Weather Channel.

And it’s not just an addictive freebie, either: Rovio’s Angry Birds, the $0.99 version, is also one of the top grossing apps overall.

Its feathered fury is more popular than Call of Duty: Zombies, Tom Tom, Plants vs. Zombies, Tetris and Doodle Jump.

On the wings of this success, Rovio has just announced that they intend to launching Bad Piggy Bank, a new in-game payment system which will allow Angry Birds players to make in-app purchases without going through Apple.
Rovio’s goal is to divorce the game’s in-app purchase system from a reliance upon a credit card. Bad Piggy Bank, then, will launch in Finland (where Rovio is based) on Elisa, the country’s biggest telecom provider, and any in-app purchases will be added to their monthly bill, or even purchase other games, with other countries and telecoms to follow.

It will be interesting to see if this gets Rovio into trouble with kids making in-app purchases. Apple’s policy has been to allow kids’ games to have them, but generally refunds the money to parents if they complain about kids unwittingly buying stuff in apps.

Via iTunes

We’ve been remiss in officially marking the event, but make no mistake, it’s only because we’ve turned into gem-matching zombies. Let us remedy that now: Popcap’s Bejewled 3 is now available for download on the Mac. And it’s awesome.

Something new and unexpected happened to me today. I, like many others including other staffers at Cult of Mac, found ourselves unable to log into mobileme.com. If you attempt to log in the MobileMe log in screen is absolutely no help whatsoever. There is no error message. No warnings — you just cannot log in.

I found out why this was happening by accident. I was attempting to arrange for a tech support call with AppleCare using the Express Lane service that you can access at support.apple.com this morning.

I attempted to log in with my Apple ID only to discover that Apple had expired the password and that I needed to reset it. Surprise! I’m okay with that, but the fact that MobileMe didn’t tell me why I could not log on is typical of that service.  After all isn’t MobileMe generally rife with quality issues and just another hobby at Apple, Inc?

If you are in the same boat as the rest of us visit My Apple ID to reset your Apple ID password. I was able to log into mobileme.com after changing my password.

Update 12/10/2010 at 12:33 PM PST: According to some users via e-mail and other sources on the internet Apple has apparently rolled out new password rules starting with the fact that passwords for Apple IDs must be eight or more characters. Apple is also pushing users to use strong passwords that include a number and/or symbol. I don’t know about you folks, but all this is news to me and I’m a paying MobileMe member. I don’t recall receiving any notification from Apple about this. How completely lame is that? A simple warning or pop-up window on MobileMe’s website would have been enough to give me a heads up, but I got nothing. Just a mystery.

It might not be Santa’s Workshop, but Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier, Friday said it now employs more than one million Chinese workers to build iPhones and iPads. The factory expects to have 1.3 million workers by the end of 2011.

The added workforce is designed to meet extra demand on the Taipei-based company, China’s largest private employer. Foxconn’s CEO told Bloomberg: “everybody is working hard.”

Though it can’t croon, the iPad is more popular as shaggy-coiffed teen idol Justin Bieber – at least in Google searches.

Google released results of its annual Zeitgeist findings, which capture key search trends, using Google’s Insights for Search and Google Trends data analytics tools.

Google’s top two fastest rising queries worldwide are both tech-related: Chatroulette and Apple’s newest product, the iPad.

Rounding out the top five are Justin Bieber, wardrobe challenged-popster Nicki Minaj and game site Friv.

The iPad and the iPhone were also the top two fastest rising searches in consumer electronics, trailed by Nokia 5530, HTC Evo 4G and Nokia rounding out the top five.

The Evo 4G was the only major Android phone to break into the top 10 global consumer electronics searches.

Via eweek, Google

Last month, Damon Alban of Gorillaz announced that he was in the midst of recording the band’s first album to be recorded entirely on the iPad… and now they say that they’ll be giving that album away for free as a Christmas gift to all their fans.

The next battle shaping up in smartphones may be between Microsoft and Google, with Apple sitting on the sidelines secure in its dominant position, one analyst told investors Friday. Indeed, a turf war is in the cards as Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Google’s Android fight for the hearts and minds of handset makers. HTC, Samsung, Motorola and LG will become the battleground as the two smartphone operating systems battle for the hardware companies’ attention.

“In the short run,” writes Needham’s Charlie Wolf, “the turf war could put the smartphone manufacturers in the driver’s seat. Ultimately, however, commoditization, accompanied by deteriorating prices and gross margins, appears inevitable for licensees of the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems,” Wolf says.

Everyone can agree that there’s simply no chance that when the iPad 2 ships next year that it won’t support FaceTime: the iPad’s the only current-gen iOS device that doesn’t support Apple’s video chat standard now, after all.

So sure, it can be taken for granted that the iPad 2 will handle FaceTime, but will it also allow for rear-facing photography? How else will it improve upon its predecessor?

There are few vintage computing clans who rival Cult of Mac members in zeal and tenacity, but fans of the Commodore Amiga come close.  The successor to the widely popular Commodore 64, the Amiga was a 16 bit multitasking computer that found great success in the gaming and video production markets.

Now the Computer-That-Never-Dies is coming to the OS of the future: iAmiga for iOS has been demoed and is (hopefully) coming soon to the App Store.

Whenever the Mac App Store launches, it’s not going to be as full-featured as the iOS equivalent. We already knew that the Mac App Store would launch without promo code support, but according to new information Apple has just sent to developers, it also won’t support Game Center or in-app payments at launch.

The storied Verizon iPhone remains as questionably and rumorous as a cryptozoological specimen: no matter how many times it is reported as a soon-to-be-imminent reality, it never quite seems to come about, no matter how assertive the Wall Street Journal or New York Times seem to be about the matter.

Still, even if it hasn’t come about yet, Apple’s clearly interested in the possibility of bringing the iPhone to Verizon when their exclusivity deal with AT&T ends, as evidenced by this most recent job posting looking to hire a new staff member who is experienced with Verizon’s CDMA network.

OBiON, a free mobile communications app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch now available for download from the iTunes App store, is an exciting — if still evolving — tool that offers more power and flexibility than any similar app available today.

The app is the mobile centerpiece in a new communication paradigm being charted by Obihai Technology, a Cupertino, CA start-up founded by the developers of the first Analog Telephone Adapter, which made “Internet calling” possible without the use of a computer and spawned the growth of Vonage and dozens of other Internet Telephony Service Providers.

Now, in conjunction with the OBiTALK web portal and the company’s Obi110 Voice Services Bridge, OBiON users can leverage the ability to make and receive calls from local or remote landlines, as well as to and from multiple VoIP services on Apple mobile devices.

Nearly 20 years ago Snagit was introduced for Windows and it has quite a following. It has always been very successful as a Windows utility so it’s odd that it has taken so long to come to the Mac, but it is here finally and worth the wait.

The release version of Snagit for Mac OS X, a screen capture and image-editing utility, is now shipping after spending a year in beta. It’s a bit expensive at $49.95, but I think it is worth the money especially after years of using it in a corporate environment along with a slew of co-workers. Now I’ll have access to it on both platforms.

However, although Snagit on the Mac features the core feature set of the Windows version, that many know and love,  it doesn’t have all the features of the award-winning Snagit 10 for Windows. Perhaps that’s why the Windows version is included for free. The serial number you purchase works on both platforms.